Salon Growth Hacks for Maximum Profits

Sometimes, we need to be brave and make massive changes in our business. Sometimes, we just need a little nudge in the right direction. And that's what this episode is all about. Join me for my five hacks on improving your salon growth. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friend, Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. And today, we're talking growth hacks. Now, I'm not a big fan of a hack, generally. I don't like it as a concept. And that's because I think the danger is that we take these little tips, these little hints, these little bits of strategy, and we try and slot them into our business without that overarching picture of what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to push things in that may not fit with our longer term vision of where we want our salon to go. So, I'm not a big fan of hacks. That said, I've got five for you today that I think can apply to almost all salon businesses. And I'd like you to see whether they can just help you on your way to success this year. And the first one is around pricing. And I know that we've discussed pricing lots of times in the Build Your Salon podcast before. And I know that we've got lots of different strategies for pricing out there. And I've certainly shared my thoughts on how we should be setting our prices. In fact, I think it's about time we did another price setting episode. I might make a note of that one. But what I don't see happening often enough is reviewing those prices. And my advice to all of my clients for the last 18 months or so has been that we need to be reviewing our prices twice a year. And that's because things are changing so quickly in the marketplace. Things are changing so quickly with the prices of our materials, the prices that were being charged by our suppliers, that I think it's much harder to remain profitable if you're only changing your prices once a year. Think about the big retailers. Think about your grocery stores. They're changing the prices of their items every single day. And I know that that's not possible for us and certainly not particularly appealing for our customers either. But I don't think that you can judge with certainty. I don't think you can estimate with certainty what your cost structure is going to be like over the next 12 months. So let's stop trying to guess so far ahead. Let's just try and look at six months of costs and tweak and change our prices. The other advantage that we have, of course, is that lots of our customers are booking online now. So they're seeing the new prices when they book. I think that reduces the lead time. What do I mean by that?

Well, it used to be that we would have to tell our customers that our prices were changing a couple of months ahead. Now that they're booking online and seeing those new prices, I don't think we need to give quite as much notice. I think probably three or four weeks would be plenty for most salon businesses. Also, your salon software is very clever. Most of the time, it will charge the customer what the prices were when they booked the appointment. So we're not going to get that situation where they booked expecting to pay one thing and turn up and pay another. So I don't think we need as much lead time. I think we can be a lot more responsive in our pricing. What that's led to, I think, is a lot more fluid relationship between salons and their prices. And also that means that there are a lot fewer salons now doing physical price cards. Because once we've paid for printing, the temptation is that we honour those prices for an awful lot longer. Handy little hint, by the way, if you're going to do printed price cards, make sure somewhere on the price card it says prices valid until. That way, if somebody picks up an old price card, they're not going to expect to have those prices honoured past that date. My strategy number two, while we're talking about money, is I really want you to think about tightening up around your deposits, around your booking fees, and around your cancellation policies. I see lots of salons coming unstuck. I think they get to the third week of the month and they're very excited that they're going to be hitting their targets. And then all of a sudden, a whole bunch of people no-show or cancel or reschedule appointments to after payday. And then we're not hitting those targets at all, which is disappointing for the salon business owner, but it's also a little bit demotivating as well. If you kind of think you are so close to the prize and then that rug is pulled out from beneath you. So let's tighten up those cancellation policies. Now, just because we have a cancellation policy doesn't mean we need to slavishly follow it every time. And whenever I meet resistance from salon owners, it's because they're saying things like, well, what if they're genuinely ill? Or what if they have a family emergency? Well, of course, in those circumstances, we will be human beings. We will be responsive. We will be empathetic. And we have the right then to say, actually, of course, we're not going to charge you your deposit or booking fee this time. But you don't get the choice unless you have those things put in place.

Now, check out the regulations in your local area. Some places you can't call it a deposit. You have to call it a booking fee. Sometimes it has to be a reasonable booking fee. Whatever. Do the research. Do the due diligence, but have something in place. Now, card capture is not enough. I know there's lots of salons that when they're taking their online bookings, they're taking card details so that they can charge the card later. That's not enough. We need something that means they put some money in the till ahead of the visit. And I would also try and make that proportionate. I see lots of salons, particularly on the hair side, booking out huge amounts of time for something like hair extensions or a balayage treatment and then being let down by a no-show at the last minute. And they've got suddenly four or five hours of time to fill, which is really unfair. And I don't think a £10 booking fee is really going to make much difference to the client's mentality in that instance. But if we're taking 25% or even 50% of that up front, heck, even some services, you know, when I'm doing my hair systems for my guys who are losing their hair, I'm charging the entire amount up front. By the time they've sat in the chair, they've already paid for that service because I cannot afford to be let down. So let's tighten up. Let's get a little bit firmer. And please try and be consistent about this. I also see a lot of salons not charging booking fees when people are booking in person or repeat bookings in the salon. It's got to be for everybody or it's going to be a little bit inconsistent and ineffective. Strategy number three, and if you're not doing this already, this can be a beautifully cheap game changer for you. And that is to start taking lost client marketing seriously. Lost client marketing is hugely powerful. And the reason it works is most of the time, if you lose a client, it's not because you screwed things up really badly. It's not because you did something drastically horribly wrong and you burnt a client or screwed up their hair or prescribed the wrong injectables. It's not because we did something drastically wrong. Usually we lose a client because of a whole string of smaller little irritants that get to a client and over time build up and make them feel that ultimately it wasn't worth it coming to see you.

They don't get the experience that they were expecting. And that's where the opportunity lies, because if we haven't screwed things up hugely, there's half a chance, three quarters of a chance that we might be able to get that client back through the salon door. It's a lot cheaper for you to try and get an existing lost client back through the door than it is to try and turn somebody from a stranger into a new client. It's also a lot quicker. And generally, if we can get to grips with whatever it was that annoyed the client in the first place, they tend to be very, very loyal as well. So lost client marketing, this is something in my business that we run every three months. So once a quarter, we set aside a portion of the marketing calendar for lost client marketing. Now, that means you're going to have to be a lot better at making sure you've got up-to-date contact details, because after a client's gone, after you've lost them, it's very hard to get hold of their email address or their phone number. So make sure your database is being cleansed regularly. But lost client marketing, I think you can afford to be really generous. I know lots of salon coaches out there say you should never discount your services. I think lost client marketing, there's an argument to be made that it's the perfect time to discount your services. Get them back in. Now, the longer they're lost, the more generous you're going to have to be. For example, if you haven't seen somebody for 12 months, chances are they've gone to another salon five, six, seven times. That means that salon's not doing a horrendous job. You offering 10% off is not going to make a blind bit of difference. So be hugely generous with your discounts if you're going to do them for lost client marketing. Do it regularly. Lots of times, clients would actually like to come back, but they feel a bit embarrassed that they've been somewhere else. And an invitation from you saying that you miss them and you want them back in the salon might be all it needs for them to give you another try. Next up, we're talking about targets. And I don't see enough of you taking your targets seriously. This is something all businesses should be looking at very, very regularly. I sometimes see people setting targets way at the beginning of the year, but actually breaking those targets down into quarterly and monthly targets doesn't happen consistently in lots of businesses. It does with my tribe because I beat them up every month until they've done it. The other thing that I don't see if you have a team is I don't see your team targets relating to your salon targets. So let's take those one at a time, shall we? Firstly, we need a salon target, and the salon target is based on the amount of profit that you want your business to generate. That's profit for you to reinvest in the business, profit for you to retain as some kind of buffer against future adversity,

and also profit that you might want to take out of the business as the salon owner. So we know all those numbers. We know what the business needs to retain. We know what buffer you should be trying to build up, and we know how much you want to take out of the business. That comes from your goal setting. That profit margin then tells us how much turnover we need. That becomes the salon target. So we break that down into a quarter, break it down into a month. Heck, you can break it down into a weekly target if you really want to. OK, so that's how we're going to set our salon target. And you should be going through this process and monitoring your targets at least every month, if not more frequently. OK, so I set a target every month and then monitor it every week because I need to know when I need to push really hard at the end of the month. I need to know when I can take my foot off the marketing a little bit because we're already at target. I need to know when I need to 10x knuckle down and work and grind in my business. Now, the bit that I see lots of managers get wrong is they have the salon target, which is, let's face it, more than most of you are doing at the moment. But it doesn't relate to what they want their team to do. What they're doing is coaching their team towards commission targets. And that's a mistake because if the commission's working, you shouldn't need to coach your team member towards that target at all. We need to coach them towards what we need the salon to achieve. So what we do is take your salon target. Let's say you've got 14 members. We're going to say, Betty's going to put this much in the till. Ernie's going to put this much in the till. But when those targets add up, that should be related to the salon target. So make sure when we're coaching your team members to better results, we're achieving what the salon needs. Otherwise, what's the point? And finally, my fifth little strategy is around marketing. And this is actually going to make your life so much easier in the longer term. And that's because coming up with a year of marketing is really, really hard work. The first time you do it, it can feel very daunting, very overwhelming. There's so much to be done, so much thinking. So what I want you to do at the end of each marketing campaign is I want you to do a little debrief. I want you to figure out whether the marketing campaign achieved what you wanted it to or not. But most importantly, I want you to figure out whether you would run that marketing campaign again. If it shows enough promise for you to dust it off and use it again, then brilliant.

When we try and come up with our 12-month marketing plan for next year, we might have three, four, five, six marketing campaigns that show enough promise that we haven't got to come up with something brand new. And the reason marketing is such hard work or you feel it's such hard work is because lots of you have the perception that marketing is continually innovative and creative, that we're always coming up with something brand new. And that's not the case. We're heading into the season where Apple are going to be having their big event when they launch their new iPhone and all the rest of it. Now, they might well come up with something that sounds very new, but ultimately it's a polished and refined version of something that exists already. And that's the most innovative company that I can think of. So we're not trying to reinvent the wheel all the time. It's OK to have campaigns that run successfully year after year after year after year. The example I always give is my new client, my recommend a friend campaign that we run each August. That's run without changing for nine years in my business now because it still delivers results. It's become a bit of an event in my salon. Rather than trying to come up with something brand new every August, I've got something tried and tested that continually delivers results. So do that marketing debrief, make next year's marketing so much easier, but write down your thoughts because this time next year, you'll have forgotten what was good and what was bad about that marketing campaign. So there we go. My five little salon growth hacks. I hope you found them inspiring, useful. Please reach out, let me know if you're going to use any of this stuff in your business or maybe there's something that you feel that I've missed that you would like to share with me. Heck, why don't you even reach out if you'd like to come on the Build Your Salon podcast and talk about some of these growth hacks that you're using. Here's my email address, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway, but I'd love to be interviewing you about your salon journey and your salon success story in a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Also reach out if you have any questions for my monthly question and answer session. I had a bit of a rant last month because I wasn't getting many questions. I had to keep nagging people to send me questions and it worked. We got loads for this month's episode, but please reach out with your questions. The more questions I get, the more I know that I'm making these episodes directly speaking to the concerns that you have in your salon business.

Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty and more successful tips for business owners. All on Build Your Salon.